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Roving Reference: GSLIS Students Lend a Hand (and Books) in Nicaragua

By Jessica DeAngelis

Over the last four years, GSLIS members of the Simmons International Relations (SIR) student group have traveled to the seaside town San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, to volunteer with a public library and its mobile project, delivering books by truck to patrons in rural farming communi- ties. In January 2009, nine students went on the trip, including Jessica DeAngelis '09LS , who writes of her experience below.

Our day began at 8 a.m. as we piled into a pickup truck and traveled over bumpy dirt roads, amidst rolling volcanic mountains. We passed carts loaded with wood drawn by tranquil oxen, and children waved as we went by. After more than an hour, we arrived at the village of Tortuguero and unloaded plastic tubs containing precious cargo: books, sports equipment, and craft materials. Though it was a holiday and the schoolyard was chained shut, children came running with books to return, eager to borrow more. A soccer match began in the street. Some of us played games while others read books, distributed snacks, helped with circulation, or gave out new library cards. No day is ever ordinary out on the San Juan del Sur (SJDS) Biblioteca Movil (Mobile Library).

The Biblioteca Movil is the mobile component of the SJDS Biblioteca Publica y Movil, Nicaragua's first lending library, located in the small, tropical port town of San Juan del Sur. GSLIS students first began traveling to volunteer in San Juan in 2006, after former Assistant Dean Denise Davis met Jane Mirandette, Nicaragua's inspired and tireless advocate for lending libraries, at an ALA conference. The library got its start when Jane began lending books from the patio of the bed and breakfast she owns in town. She discovered that since books are precious (because they're expensive), a common saying in Nicaragua is, "to lend a book is to lose a book." But she found that the concept of lending caught on quickly. Currently, the main library in town has over 12,000 books, and the mobile project serves about 30 rural communities.

The SJDS library is well used and well loved. Story hours, craft workshops, and other events are very well attended, and children often come in to sit and read (or be read to), or to play a game. The staff makes sure that the collection contains textbooks used in the local curriculum, since in most schools there are not enough books to go around. Adults come to the library to find practical information that is often not available elsewhere, especially on issues like health and domestic violence. The library now has wireless Internet, which works as long as the town's somewhat inconsistent electricity is on.

As the concept of lending libraries begins to catch on in Nicaragua, volunteers and staff members of the SJDS library have become leaders in their fields. They run workshops on topics like collection development, basic book preservation, and program development, and share their knowledge with librarians across the country. The library has also recently been accepted into Nicaragua's national network of public libraries.

GSLIS's involvement has grown along with the library. The January 2009 group of volunteers was the largest yet, with nine participants. And thanks to the hard work and dedication of two volunteers, Jessica Haglund '09LS and Hannah Miller '09LS, GSLIS is working on offering its first San Juan del Sur for-credit study-abroad program in March 2010.

When we finally packed up the mobile project in Tortuguero that day, many of us were drenched in sweat after being outrun by 10- year-old soccer stars. We were exhausted but our hearts were light. We could see that although lending libraries are a new concept in Nicaragua, people even in the most remote, rural communities have made the library their own and can now gain free access to information that was previously reserved for only those who could afford it.

To learn more about the evolution of the SJDS Biblioteca Móvil, and of lending libraries in Nicaragua, you can read about experiences that past volunteers have had on the GSLIS Dispatches from the Field blog.